Art and Love

2020 hasn't been an easy year. So I'm sharing artwork and poems I love. Suggestions welcome!

[thehopefulquotes]

“It’s all too much and not enough at the same time.”

— Unknown

[thoughtkick]

“People start to heal the moment they feel heard.”

— Cheryl Richardson

[thoughtkick]

“And so it seems I must always write you letters that I can never send.”

— Sylvia Plath

[tullia]

“Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little?”

(Sylvia Plath)

[nightlyquotes]

“Thanks again for saving me. Someday, I’ll save you too.”

— Zelda Fitzgerald, Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald

[thoughtkick]

“Be with someone who treats you as a destination, not a stop along the way.”

— Mandy Hale

[nightlyquotes]

“Your heart just breaks, that’s all. But you can’t judge or point fingers. You just have to be lucky enough to find someone who appreciates you.”

— Audrey Hepburn

[thoughtkick]

“For once I need to choose myself, or else I’m going to lose myself.”

— Veronika Jensen

[thehopefulquotes]

“I do not know who I am, where I am going - and I am the one who has to decide the answers to these hideous questions.”

— Sylvia Plath

[nightlyquotes]

“When I say, I love you, it’s not because I want you or because I can’t have you. It has nothing to do with me. I love what you are, what you do, how you try. I’ve seen your kindness and your strength. I’ve seen the best and the worst of you. And I understand with perfect clarity exactly what you are.”

— Joss Whedon

[nightlyquotes]

“So often we try to make other people feel better by minimizing their pain, by telling them that it will get better (which it will) or that there are worse things in the world (which there are). But that’s not what I actually needed. What I actually needed was for someone to tell me that it hurt because it mattered. I have found this very useful to think about over the years, and I find that it is a lot easier and more bearable to be sad when you aren’t constantly berating yourself for being sad.”

— John Green

[nightlyquotes]

“So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.”

— Jorge Luis Borges, After a While

[tullia]

"i thank You God for most this amazing”

(e. e. cummings) i thank You God for most this amazing day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes (i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay great happening illimitably earth) how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any—lifted from the no of all nothing—human merely being doubt unimaginable You? (now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

[tullia]

“Blue”

(May Swenson)

Blue, but you are Rose, too, and buttermilk, but with blood dots showing through. A little salty your white nape boy-wide.  Glinting hairs shoot back of your ears' Rose that tongues like to feel the maze of, slip into the funnel, tell a thunder-whisper to. When I kiss, your eyes' straight lashes down crisp go like doll's blond straws.  Glazed iris Roses, your lids unclose to Blue-ringed targets, their dark sheen-spokes almost green.  I sink in Blue- black Rose-heart holes until you blink.  Pink lips, the serrate folds taste smooth, and Rosehip- round, the center bud I suck. I milknip your two Blue-skeined blown Rose beauties, too, to sniff their berries' blood, up stiff pink tips.  You're white in patches, only mostly Rose, buckskin and saltly, speckled like a sky.  I love your spots, your white neck, Rose, your hair's wild straw splash, silk spools for your ears.  But where white spouts out, spills on your brow to clear eyepools, wheel shafts of light, Rose, you are Blue.

[tullia]

"Gloire de Dijon"

(D. H. Lawrence) When she rises in the morning I linger to watch her; She spreads the bath-cloth underneath the window And the sunbeams catch her Glistening white on the shoulders, While down her sides the mellow Golden shadow glows as She stoops to the sponge, and her swung breasts Sway like full-blown yellow Gloire de Dijon roses. She drips herself with water, and her shoulders Glisten as silver, they crumple up Like wet and falling roses, and I listen For the sluicing of their rain-dishevelled petals. In the window full of sunlight Concentrates her golden shadow Fold on fold, until it glows as Mellow as the glory roses.

[tullia]

“This is How You Lose Her” (Junot Diaz)

This is how you lose her. You lose her when you forget to remember the little things that mean the world to her: the sincerity in a stranger’s voice during a trip to the grocery, the delight of finding something lost or forgotten like a sticker from when she was five, the selflessness of a child giving a part of his meal to another, the scent of new books in the store, the surprise short but honest notes she tucks in her journal and others you could only see if you look closely. You must remember when she forgets. You lose her when you don’t notice that she notices everything about you: your use of the proper punctuation that tells her continuation rather than finality, your silence when you’re about to ask a question but you think anything you’re about to say to her would be silly, your mindless humming when it is too quiet, your handwriting when you sign your name in blank sheets of paper, your muted laughter when you are trying to be polite, and more and more of what you are, which you don’t even know about yourself, because she pays attention. She remembers when you forget. You lose her for every second you make her feel less and less of the beauty that she is. When you make her feel that she is replaceable. She wants to feel cherished. When you make her feel that you are fleeting. She wants you to stay. When you make her feel inadequate. She wants to know that she is enough and she does not need to change for you, nor for anyone else because she is she and she is beautiful, kind and good. You must learn her. You must know the reason why she is silent. You must trace her weakest spots. You must write to her. You must remind her that you are there. You must know how long it takes for her to give up. You must be there to hold her when she is about to. You must love her because many have tried and failed. And she wants to know that she is worthy to be loved, that she is worthy to be kept. And, this is how you keep her.

[softwaring]

🍁🍂🍁❤️‍🔥